Sun stamped cards

Hi all! A bit celestial today :)

Nula from Noolibird.com has recently sent me a lovely stamp with the sun as a thank-you for the photos and a testimonial I wrote for her blog/website. I loved the stamp and immediately sat down to card making to make some fresh cards using different techniques and colour combos. What a perfect timing with this stamp! We are short of sun and natural sunlight right now, in December, longing for some dryness and warmth. So it was good fun to make some cards with sunny warm hues. 

I stamped the image a few times with the black ink on yellow card or on a watercolour pad and then coloured it with my watecolour pencils or gold Twinkling H2os. The more sparkle the better. Cutting out the paper from in between the sun rays can be a hell of a job and a good test for decoupage skills though :)

I tried different backgrounds too, even the grassy green :) - it makes a good contrast with the orangey sun rays. The stamp is quite sizeable so it can be used as a card topper on its own, decorative and ornamental as it is. I wanted it to be in the focus of attention.

Now, the cards individually...

Day and Night duo ;)

Folksy stripes and a doily texture...

Metallic crepe paper in juicy green colour... The sun has been watercoloured with pencils.

With an orange background. Twinkling H2os in action.

And the last card I made in this set - a card with an acetate front onto which the image had been stamped first, then covered with glue and glitter :) - a new technique I wanted to try out for this image and acetate cards. Quite pleased with the results although it's virtually impossible to keep the acetate free from micro-bits of the very fine glitter.

and all together :)

Actually I  fancy making more "Splendid Suns" so there may be more cards with this design coming soon!

In the meantime I'm sending my cards to the Hand-made Monday no. 94 blog hop fun. Do join in! 

Oldies from the past: My glass painting beginnings. How it all began…

I’ve always loved pictures painted on the glass. I can’t tell what exactly attracted me to them, maybe that smooth glassy surface covered with the transparent eye-catching colours contrasting with the uneven texture of the flowing lines, or maybe the intense rainbow colours and their transparency… or maybe all of these things. I loved especially those with some sort of fabulous whimisical dream-like late night scenery, where a thick deep blue inky night of a vitrail paint surrounds the golden-honey stars and moon outlined with a silver contour paste. Everything was so colourful, fairy-tale like, esoteric… The colours were flowing and the lines were curling and swirling all over the glass. I remember that as a child I looked at those pictures as if iI had been hypnotized. I wanted them! I craved them! I wanted to know how to paint them!

I used to see them at the craft shows during the big events in my town. The pictures were painted either by some freelance self-named artists or by the handicapped and sold to raise the money for the local school for the special needs children.

A few years later, as a tutor and student at the same time, I got 2 glass painted gifts from two different pupils. They were a thank-you gift for the whole year of teaching them English. Again, holding  in my hand a piece of mysteriously painted glass, I stared and stared and stared… thinking: what if I tried it myself one day?

Then a new chapter of my life began – moving and living in the UK. February 2008. A new opportunity for developing a brand new hobby arose and the deeply rooted idea of painting on the glass came up to the surface again – I had been taken to a Hobby Craft shop for the first time by my bf. Amazed by the vast craft supplies at that shop, I just couldn’t stop thinking about buying my first few pots of glass paint. And then THE DAY had come! I bought my first glass painting kit – 4 pots of vitrail paint, a tube of outliner, a brush and a pair of glassy votives. I rushed home quickly to see what it feels like to paint on the glass. I fell in love with it! I started and I couldn’t stop… and I still can’t :)

Now, my early works… those days when everything still seemed soooo difficult – piping, outlining, choosing colours and style, smooth even coverage, curvy surfaces, grasping the proportions… Bottles, votives, jars, simple vases – I tried them first, as well as painting on an acetate to get the knack of it.

Below here are a first few examples of my very early works…

I've also painted on an acetate to make transparent window art pictures...

Celestial motifs have always been my favourite! This Sun & Moon Vase was a gift to my bf's mum.

To be continued...